Figure Study after Andrea di Bonaiuto, S. Maria Novella, Florence

Hippolyte Flandrin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hippolyte Flandrin was the first pupil of Ingres to win the Prix de Rome, enabling him to study in Italy from 1833 to 1838. During one of three visits to Florence, he made this drawing based on a figure in fresco (ca. 1365) by Andrea di Bonaiuto in the Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella. Flandrin’s studies of religious paintings in Italy had a profound influence on the artist's career, which he largely spent executing major religious decorative programs in Parisian churches, including Saint-Germain-des-Près.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art